


You and Me Burning Matches, Lifting Latches

by Diminua



Series: I'll Try Not to Sing Out of Key [6]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, M/M, Might be some spoilers but more likely simply won't make as much sense., Non-Linear Narrative, Not even a narrative really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-06-07 10:34:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6800284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diminua/pseuds/Diminua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They could have been gods. Instead, there's breakfast. And mortality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Curiously, at least to an alien mind, there is no future tense in Gallifreyan. There are specific units of time – days and dates and minutes and hours that can be used to slice the temporal curve short of infinity into smaller and smaller slivers.

‘Or to anchor an event to a specific point.’ The Doctor adds, ignoring the satirical arch of Missy’s eyebrow over the readouts she’s cross referencing. She’s right of course, anchor is far too strong a word, but it’s best to stay focussed and keep things bite sized when explaining them to humans. Not least because it gives him time to remember what they aren’t supposed to know yet. 

‘But no future tense.’  


‘No. Only the ever present and ever changing ‘now’.’ 

‘It’s not so strange a concept surely.’ Missy says languidly, still more focussed on the energy fluctuations that have caught her eye. ‘Even humans do it sometimes. Have you never heard someone say ‘I am there at 6 o’clock’ and not ‘I will be’.

‘But there’s a past tense.’ Clara says, less asking than checking. ‘Ok.’

 

There are problems with the past tense as well of course. Not least the way in which it’s tight-tied into the concept of immutability, and therefore amusingly less and less to do with the lived experience of the universe as is. The curve of space-time is an ocean without a bed to cast an anchor in, and the islands move, and time itself is also nothing (as the Master tried to explain to Donna once) but a shared delusion of sentient minds. Seen from the outside everything is really happening all at once. 

If it weren’t he wouldn’t be able to send his thoughts skimming like a stone to the past. 

Nor would others.

 

‘He said he sent the signal back to you as a child.’ The Doctor muses over the teapot and stacked plate of toast. A hefty half full jar of jam just by his plate, knife still buried to the hilt. ‘But I’m not sure it’s always been there.’

‘He changed the timeline, that’s all. We’re in one but remembering the other. Clever of us.’ The Master has bacon and eggs and chips fried in the fat of a slaughtered animal. He’s drinking tea partly because the coffee in Hastings in 1966 is basically undrinkable, and partly because he likes the way the unhomogenised milk creates shiny patches on the surface where the fat separates out in the heat. 

He’s not normally this hungry but regeneration burns so it can build, and the weather isn’t helping. It’s his least favourite, a warm drizzle that seems to have seeped into the café through the flimsy metal window frames and is slowly saturating everything. Even the Doctor’s toast looks soggy, tearing raggedly as he bites into it. 

Even so there are a few determined trippers poking about in rock pools and a woman walking a dog along the strand. Stubborn, these humans. They’ve probably even convinced themselves they’re enjoying it. 

‘I was here 900 years ago you know.’ The Doctor says, apropos of nothing much. ‘That was to do with someone changing history as well.’

‘And you were incredibly tedious and sanctimonious about it.’ 

‘I was resourceful and sensible. Anyway, how do you..’

‘Lucky guess.’ He’s taking too long to eat his toast so the Master steals a slice to slather in butter. He was right about it being soggy. If he hadn’t had the pleasure of the theft it wouldn’t even be worth eating. ‘None of which explains what we’re doing here now.’ 

‘Having breakfast.’ The Doctor says patiently, picking up the teapot again. ‘Another cup?’


	2. Chapter 2

This last time the Tardis actually takes him where he wanted to be. Even where he expected to be. 

It’s very quiet, the cool flirt of water down a shallow fall onto rocks, the subdued murmur of insects. 

‘I still think we could have been gods.’ The Master says, not bothering to turn his head as the Doctor eases gently down onto the blanket beside him, but shuffling back until they prop each other up. 

‘You almost were, once.’ 

‘More than once.’ 

‘My mistake.’ 

 

‘Who are you two then?’ It’s a reasonable question, they’ve been picking the shopkeeper’s brains for at least the last 5 minutes. He’d be bound to ask sooner or later. 

‘Well I’m the Doctor and this is..’

‘Harold Saxon.’ The Master interrupts, looking up from the tin of peas he’s inspecting with a brief and thoroughly insincere smile. Why do humans adulterate their food with all this muck?

‘Oh. Like the Prime Minister?’ 

‘That’s the one.’ He puts the tin back and picks up a packet of noodles. ‘What happened to him anyway? I voted for him.’

‘So did I. Everyone did. He was..’ 

‘Was what?’ The Doctor asks, suddenly alert to the change in the man’s voice.

‘Well he seemed nice. Reliable. The sort of person, you know, who you could rely on.’ By now the man is even tapping on the counter, over and over: 1234, 1234.

‘What’s that?’ 

‘What?’ The man stops, confused by the sharpness in the Doctor’s voice.

‘Nothing.’ The Master interrupts, seizing the back of the Doctor’s jacket to pull him back from the counter and out. ‘It’s nothing. My friend is a bit of a conspiracy theorist, that’s all. Sorry you’ve been troubled.’ 

The Doctor waits until they’re out of the shop to turn on him. ‘You don’t mean to tell me they’re all still hypnotised.’ He hisses.

‘I’m not telling you anything and no, of course not. Well not much. Just a bit hypnotised.’

‘Could you unhypnotise them please?’

‘I don’t know. Probably, if we hack back into the Archangel network.’ He considers the point. ‘It seems a lot of bother though. It’s not like they’re ever going to see that Harold Saxon again.’

‘I just.. you’re unbelievable.’ By now the Doctor is pacing. ‘You’re actually unbelievable.’ 

‘And yet so many people clearly do believe.’ The Master says smugly. ‘Go on admit it, you’re impressed. And maybe a bit turned on.’ 

‘Yes, well.’ The Doctor coughs repressively, all prim and cross and charming in his nice suit. ‘This isn’t finding our stray Feltrouvian is it?’ And he sets off down the street, peering over the walls of people’s gardens as if he thinks a four foot blue alien might be hiding behind the dustbins.

With any luck he’ll be arrested as a peeping tom. The Master’s been looking for an opportunity to pick up some handcuffs.


	3. Chapter 3

They don’t last long, humans. Even as uploads they fade out over a few centuries. They lose the will, or lose themselves. 

The Doctor isn’t sure that this Utopia the Master-Mistress has built is a kindness. Isn’t sure it’s truly intended to be. 

‘Do you think its cruel then?’ Clara asks. 

‘No. Just arrogant.’ And who is the Doctor to comment on that, when all is said and done. 

‘Do you think Danny’s ok?’

‘He had some unfinished business.’ The Doctor shrugs, but his voice is gentle. ‘That’s all she told me.’ Clara nods, not because she understands but because she doesn’t and she isn’t, right now, in a state to care. 

Danny is gone, whether here or elsewhere or nowhere at all. Danny is gone. 

She doesn’t even notice when the Doctor slips away.

 

He finds Missy at an unshuttered window. Drenched in sunlight and looking down on wide white steps. Out there people stroll, sit, eat ice cream and take photographs. In the near distance is the fenced-in statue of a long-dead queen. 

He recognises it. He had breakfast with Clara the day he first met her overlooking this cathedral. 

‘No one can see in of course.’ Missy tells him without looking up. ‘We’re not quite occupying the usual dimensions of this building.’ 

‘Where have you been?’ He asks. 

‘Busy.’ Missy opens her arms expansively, indicating the terminals around her. ‘Busybusybusy Doctor. Like you.’ She smirks. ‘Sorry I didn’t make the wedding.’ 

‘You know about..’

‘Professor Song. But of course.’

‘You’re not.. annoyed, surely.’ 

‘Oh Doctor, my dear.’ She offers him a bleak little smile. ‘Your timeline and my own do run roughly parallel, remember. Almost the first thing I learnt about Professor River Song was the first thing you did.’ 

‘You learnt how she died.’ The Doctor sighs, closing his eyes briefly to help absorb that better. ‘Of course you did.’

‘And I learnt that you uploaded her to the library computer.’

‘I meant to be kind. I’m not sure I was.’ 

‘You worry so much about these things.’

‘And you nudged Clara in my direction.’ 

‘I had to do something. You were moping.’ 

‘How long have you been keeping tabs on me?’ 

‘Only always.’ The question genuinely surprises her. ‘I thought you knew that.’ 

‘You wouldn’t need to if you came with me.’ 

‘What about your little friend?’

‘She has a life to get back to once this is over. And it was you who gave her my number. You must have seen something in her.’

 

Clara jumps and almost bangs her head on the Dalek casing as Missy pounds the top of the dome with her fist. ‘Honestly. I swear it’s your proximity that makes this creature so stupid.' She tells the Doctor. 'She was doing quite well earlier.’ 

‘Is Clara in there?’ The Doctor is horrified.

But Missy has pre-empted him before he can act, pulling the thing round by the eyestalk so that she can talk to the terrified occupant directly. ‘Now, if left is left and forward is forward.' She says, in her best 'give me patience' voice. 'What do we think open might be, hmm?’

‘Open.’ Clara mutters. Nothing happens at first, so she tries again, focussing on the thought, putting force behind it. ‘Open.’

Although he's worked it out, the Doctor's eyes still widen as the casing cracks apart, revealing Clara trapped inside, tears running down her pale cheeks. 

‘What are you..’ He turns on Missy. ‘What is she doing in there?’

‘Oh don’t be like that. It was a very effective disguise until she panicked and stopped thinking for herself. Of course it helps that she’s tiny-teeny-tiny.’ 

‘You’re not much bigger.’ Clara says wrathfully, letting the Doctor help her out. ‘I’m really stiff now.’ 

‘Well shake a leg and get over it dear. Time to run.’ 

The Doctor’s anger - right on the top of his mind – is exhilarating. She could almost laugh for the sheer joy of it. You’ve always done well if the Doctor is angry with you. 

 

‘I’m fine by the way.’ She says, again, once Clara is home and safe. Or at least, home and out the door.

‘Of course you are. You’re always fine.’ The Doctor is occupying himself fiddling with the console. Determined to be cross.

‘You weren’t worried about me at all?’ She asks innocently.

‘I doubt I’ll ever be worried about you again if you keep..’ He pulls himself up short. ‘Which was the point, wasn’t it?’ He mimics her voice, her tone. ‘Do keep up Doctor.’

Missy just takes it as a compliment. Bobs a ridiculous curtsey. ' _Not_ one of your fragile little humans.' She agrees, looking pleased with herself. 

The Doctor gives up on the glare. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ He asks. 

‘Wrong question Doctor.’ She moves neatly into his personal space like a chesspiece making mate. ‘A better one would be, what am I going to do with you?’


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Doctor finds a crown and loses consciousness, and this fic now requires a rating.

‘I’m sure he dropped it around here somewhere.’ The Doctor mutters, more to himself than the Master. Wading in dirty water up to his thighs, cream coloured trousers soaking up the moisture like a wick. 

Safely on the bank, and watching with an air of interest, the Master doesn’t bother to respond. The Doctor has said exactly the same thing twice before in the last 20 minutes, and if he doesn’t find what he’s looking for soon, will no doubt say it again. 

Eventually, and with a sudden cry of ‘Aha, what’s that’, the Doctor swoops down, sliding sideways and, after briefly dropping to his knees in the mud, coming back up with a shout of triumph and the imperial crown of the Grun – just a hollow metal band, but of immense civic importance, apparently – before overbalancing the other way and tumbling backwards, to land heavily on his behind instead. 

‘You know if it weren’t for your association with me I do believe Flavia was considering offering you the presidency at one point.’ The Master tells him.

‘Really?’ The Doctor effects a vagueness of manner, squinting in the sun as he struggles back to his feet. ‘Then I should probably thank you.’ Clouds of mud eddy and ooze from and around his formerly immaculate cricketing whites as he wades towards the shore. ‘I don’t think it’s the sort of offer you’re really allowed to refuse.’ 

‘Indeed.’

‘Although I’m not quite sure why you’re mentioning it now.’

‘It amused me suddenly, watching you slosh about in the mud after that antediluvian bit of brass.’ 

‘Yes well.’ He hooks the crown around one arm to free his hands for the scramble up the bank. ‘If you’ve quite finished having a rich and sinister chuckle at my expense, perhaps you’d like to give me a hand out?’ 

‘Certainly.’ The Master pulls off a glove with the air of patience and edges himself cautiously down the bank before extending that one bare hand to help the Doctor up onto the grass beside him. 

‘You’re becoming quite scathing you know.’ He says as soon as they’re on a level, hands still clasped close and eyes meeting quite naturally. ‘My bad influence I trust?’

‘I expect so. You are generally all my bad influences.’ The Doctor admits, fishing a handkerchief out of a top pocket and offering it to the Master first, so that he can work the linen fastidiously between the fingers and make sure his hands are truly clean before he slips his glove back on. 

‘Now.’ The Doctor says. ‘Let’s get this back where it belongs shall we?’

 

The hotel they have chosen was once a monastery. Rooms comfortably sized but Spartan, a few white sheets, washed and washed again to that softness that speaks of thinning, a deep sink stand with a pale cake of soap, a brass rail along one wall to hang clothes on, and another above the window for the curtains that offer privacy but don’t shut out the soft pale-sodium light. 

At the moment, with those curtains open, the room is flooded in it. It mellows the sharp edges of the Doctor’s silhouette and deepens the hollows of breastbone and the easy rise and fall of his chest. He’s on his back, gently nudged there somewhere between sleeping and waking, but slipping willingly back into sleep now, with the Master’s help. Not a drop of resistance in him even as fingers close and coax his legs apart, trail ticklishly up the hairs on his thighs, skirting his hipbone and over his chest. 

‘Sleep.’ The Master murmurs, pressing a kiss just at that point on the temple where it’s most usual to touch another mind. The Doctor’s pulse beats lightly here, barely perceptible against the Master’s lips. 

He refused to do this in the Tardis. Perhaps he thought she’d panic, seeing him so vulnerable, so trusting. The Master would rather have it on neutral territory anyway. Ever since his brief theft she’s been just a little more wary of him than before. 

The Doctor’s mouth is sweet, trace elements of mint and calcium carbonate as the Master kisses him, tongue lapping at that lower lip, making it wet, sucking it between his own. His mind is drifting in a soft, satin, twilight, but still sinking towards deeper sleep, to dreams. His fingers twitch, but his head lolls back to the side when released. 

It’s safe now to kiss him again, to pay rather more attention, admit to more affection, than the Master would if he were conscious. 

Even to indulge some slight possessiveness that should be alien to their species, now that the Doctor can’t hear the soft steady chant of mineminemine that tolls quietly in the Master’s hindbrain. 

They will have to separate again soon if the Master is feeling like this. Separate or mesh, and that last is unthinkable. Terrifying. 

For tonight though, the Master is determined not to think about that. Instead he rolls the Doctor’s unconscious body over onto his stomach, and considers exactly where to kiss him next.


	5. Chapter 5

The blanket is homespun, a loose weave, and the Doctor plucks idly at the blades of grass that poke through, dropping them in the Master’s lap, thin stripes like blood against the dark grey wool. 

He brushes them off fastidiously, pulling his knees up to discourage the Doctor from doing it again. Sways slightly, knee joints stiff from remaining in the same position, but the Doctor’s arms tighten without conscious thought, and they manage to find stability again. 

Even that small effort is tiring, and the Master lets his eyes close, his mind’s drift dictated by the slow in and out of their breathing. 

The press of a kiss to the back of his neck, something like an apology but not quite regretful enough, slides like a spark under the skin, and he lifts his hand to unbutton his collar, invite further kisses. 

The skin on the back of the Doctor’s hands is thin and soft under his own, his fingers all knuckles as the Master’s slide between them. Their minds fall into step with the ease of long familiarity. 

No more secrets.

 

The Doctor sleeps on after his soft, silent, orgasm, not even shifting as the monastery bell strikes the hour or the lights go up outside, dreams drifting easily from eroticism into something tender and quiet. He won’t quite know, when he wakes, what was real and what was not, what his mind conjured up and what the Master planted there. 

It is almost too perfect. Almost too safe, but it is as much of a risk to his ego as the Master is willing to take. It still revolts him that his own self-worth wants anything from the Doctor at all. He is meant, as all Timelords are meant, to be autonomous. 

 

‘Nonsense.’ The word ruffles the hair at the nape of the Master’s neck, is breathed softly into the back of his loosened collar. ‘As absurd a convention as telling us our species has no natural interest in the physical act of union.’ 

‘Is it?’ 

 

On top. No objection to being penetrated, but always on top. Arrogance in part of course – when was the Master ever free from arrogance – but mostly fear of being trapped. And pleasure at teasing, of course, pausing and leaning forward until her hair falls like a net around them both, scented with that woody, myrrhic perfume. 

Yet not so afraid. Meeting his gaze head on. Something less elusive. Hands closing over his on her thighs, smooth and pale - and it is odd, still, the very fineness of the hair, like down, where it was coarse, and the flick back of her head as she resumes momentum, and the muscle – sleeker but still solid in there somewhere – flexes, and she is still meeting his eye over this further distance, and it’s both concession and challenge, somehow, and if he could just focus he might even understand, he might catch what she means.. but thoughts fragment, flare brightly in the heat of her, and die. 

Afterwards there are only pieces, a fractured puzzle he cannot put together, and her light, teasing suggestion that he’ll be writing her sonnets next, if he goes on like that.


	6. Final Chapter

‘I still want to know how you infiltrated the Matrix.’ 

‘Really Doctor does it matter? Surely it’s sufficient that I proved it can be done and halted the trial.’ 

‘And you’re sure Peri’s definitely alright?’ He wrestles the Tardis key out of his pocket as he asks, and has his answer at once in the Master’s rising impatience. ‘Yes, I see she is. Pity I missed the wedding though.’ 

‘It wasn’t anything spectacular. You would have been disappointed in the cake.’ 

Already halfway to the console, the Doctor only just visibly breaks stride, suppressing the urge to shoot a quelling, irritated glance over his shoulder. Since this latest regeneration the Master has taken to what he describes as ‘pricking the Doctor’s considerable pomposity’ and the Doctor thinks of as inciting him to murder. 

‘You didn’t actually go, did you?’ 

‘Certainly not. The matter doesn’t interest me.’ He wonders, not for the first time, why the Doctor doesn’t change the desktop and raise the console. It’s absurdly low for him now. ‘I was more curious about why the High Council wanted you dead.’ 

‘Because I know things they’d rather I didn’t.’ 

‘And who would you tell, Doctor? The White Guardian? That personification of utter indifference?’ He shakes his head. ‘There must be more to it than that. Something still hidden in the matrix.’ 

‘Well we're not going back in. Whatever it is I’m sure it can wait, and we're bound to discover it in the usual way eventually.’ As is often the case this time around the Doctor is dismissive and insistent in equal, infuriating measure. 

'By taking the long route you mean?' The Master suggests. 

'Yes. By taking the long route.' 

 

The Master shivers at a sudden chill – the temperature hasn’t dropped, it’s his body that’s wearing. He’s been hard on all of them, but especially this last. Like the proud owner of a vintage lightship, determined to prove what it can still do.

The Doctor opens his fingers and lets energy slip out between them and into the Master’s chest as his strength ebbs, glowing and impossibly gentle. 

Warmth spreads out from the touch, stiffening his spine, dulling the ache in each joint.

He chuckles as the extra strength lets him lift his head again, tighten his hold on the hand beneath his own. 

‘Really Doctor. Is there any point at this stage?’

‘Just a little longer.’ There’s sadness behind the words, suffusing the mind. He never did like endings. ‘We might as well stick together.’

‘And how is that going to be possible?’

‘You tell me. You’re the one who’s done this before.’ And now, of course, there is hope. Fragile and fluttering.

‘It’s been something of a tango hasn’t it?’ The Master muses softly. ‘Stepping up close, and stepping back, over and over again.’ 

‘We were scared.’ The Doctor’s voice is not weak, but it quivers a little as he murmurs the words in the Master’s ear. ‘You were scared of having feelings, and I was afraid you didn’t feel enough.’ 

That is an oversimplification – accuracy sacrificed to clarity, since the two are not synonyms. But this is how the Doctor thinks, in words, how they have both been trained to think. To pin thought down rather than to enlarge it. It is too late to change now.  
The loosened skin on the back of the Doctor’s hand rises in folds, soft and velvet, as the Master’s thumb strokes over it, and he is so very tired.

‘I’m not scared now.’ He says. 

‘Alright.’ Lips press to the back of his neck, just below the straight, coarse hair that tapers off into his loosened collar. ‘Show me.’

It’s cautious at first, as though the Master doesn’t believe he means it, expects to be driven out, and then it’s fire, the chasm of madness spitting and molten as the Doctor tries to move as carefully in himself, skids and slaloms in the unfamiliar channels, the high speed circuits and glass walls of the Master’s mind. There’s no purchase, no brakes, no control, and he cannot imagine how the Master lives like this. 

Chains across the tracks, cages and bars that lock movement down, halt the headlong rush, and it hurts. Oh how it hurts.

The Doctor recoils, flinches away into his own mind before he can check himself. 

‘Well that didn’t work.’ 

The Master chuckles, but grimly. The pain of failure runs deep. A fracture, something too serious to hide, and the Doctor reaches out for it at once, curls around it instinctively, all soft apology and kisses, forgetting to be afraid.

This at least is easy, to coil carefully out from here, let the Master twine into him just as readily. Quicker and stronger, but not as.. no not as thickly as the Doctor’s own mind. The Doctor is a hundred thousand tiny filaments, sharp and sparkling, to the Master’s dark and muscular growth. 

‘Insidious.’ The Master murmurs. 

‘Yes.’ 

Around them, as they spill into each other, the universe opens out. They can see further now, can reach further still. Fingertips stretching for the stars, minds spiralling and spilling into the darkness. He understands it now, what the Master said before, the temptation to fall into the universe. 

The fierce joy of it, and the resonance of remembered music. Beethoven’s ode - such a strange restrained word to use for something so loud and so triumphant. The shout of a great, exaltatious chorus.

Spooling, twining, tumbling forward, outward, the long and tangled timeline of them. And now the Master’s slalom mind is perfect, rushing them on. The heat and pressure of it seeking cool assurance from the vacuum of space. 

He can hear the Master laughing at his pleasure, their pleasure, and it echoes, bubbling through and taking him. And they understand now, jointly and individually, that an angel has fallen and an animal has gone mad and that these are one and the same thing, Gods and mortals and certainties and uncertainties, and they are still.. they must.. they will.. 

 

..but there is no future tense in Gallifreyan. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the Beatles track 'Two of Us'. And this is, I think, the end.


End file.
